Great Throughts Treasury

"The essential ingredient of politics is timing."

"The twentieth century really belongs to those who will build it. The future can be promised to no one."

"Bilingualism is not an imposition on the citizens. The citizens can go on speaking one language or six languages, or no languages if they so choose. Bilingualism is an imposition on the state and not the citizens. "

"The attainment of of a just society is the cherished hope of civilized men."

"We take the position that there is no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation."

"Let us overthrow the totems, break the taboos. Or better, let us consider them cancelled. Coldly, let us be intelligent."

"The past is to be respected and acknowledged, but not to be worshipped. It is our future in which we will find our greatness."

"We must now establish the basic principles, the basic values and beliefs which hold us together as Canadians so that beyond our regional loyalties there is a way of life and a system of values which make us proud of the country that has given us such freedom and such immeasurable joy."

"If Canada is to survive, it can only survive in mutual respect and in love for one another."

"Our hopes are high. Our faith in the people is great. Our courage is strong. And our dreams for this beautiful country will never die."

"I believe a constitution can permit the co-existence of several cultures and ethnic groups with a single state."

"I must say that "Give Peace a Chance" has always seemed to me to be sensible advice."

"What is considered sinful in one of the great religions to which citizens belong isn't necessarily sinful in the others. Criminal law therefore cannot be based on the notion of sin; it is crimes that it must define."

"As against the "invisible hand" of Adam Smith, there has to be a visible hand of politicians whose objective is to have the kind of society that is caring and humane."

"A country, after all, is not something you build as the pharaohs built the pyramids, and then leave standing there to defy eternity. A country is something that is built every day out of certain basic shared values."

"We wish nothing more, but we will accept nothing less. Masters in our own house we must be, but our house is the whole of Canada."

"Canada is a country whose main exports are hockey players and cold fronts. Our main imports are baseball players and acid rain. "

"Perhaps the rediscovery of our humanity, and the potential of the human spirit which we have read about in legends of older civilizations, or in accounts of solitary mystics, or in tales of science fiction writers - perhaps this will constitute the true revolution of the future. The new frontier lies not beyond the planets but within each one of us."

"I bear solemn witness to the fact that NATO heads of state and of government meet only to go through the tedious motions of reading speeches, drafted by others, with the principal objective of not rocking the boat. "

"There are a lot of bleeding hearts around who just dont like to see people with helmets and guns. All I can say is go and bleed. It is more important to keep law and order in society than to be worried about weak-kneed people. Society must take every means at its disposal to defend itself against the emergence of a parallel power which defies the elected power."

"In reality, though, the first thing to ask of history is that it should point out to us the paths of liberty. The great lesson to draw from revolutions is not that they devour humanity but rather that tyranny never fails to generate them."

"Reason over passion. "

"Americans should never underestimate the constant pressure on Canada which the mere presence of the United States has produced. We?re different people from you and we?re different people because of you. Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is effected by every twitch and grunt. It should not therefore be expected that this kind of nation, this Canada, should project itself as a mirror image of the United States."

"Be ready when opportunity comes...Luck is the time when preparation and opportunity meet."

"Canada is seen to some as a confederation of shopping centres."

"Canada regards herself as responsible to all mankind for the peculiar ecological balance that now exists so precariously in the water, ice and land areas of the Arctic archipelago. We do not doubt for a moment that the rest of the world would find us at fault, and hold us liable, should we fail to ensure adequate protection of that environment from pollution or artificial deterioration."

"Canada will be a strong country when Canadians of all provinces feel at home in all parts of the country, and when they feel that all Canada belongs to them."

"Harvard was an extraordinary window on the world."

"Democracy demands that elected members be able to realize fully the role for which they have been chosen."

"I believe that Canada cannot, indeed, that Canada must not survive by force. The country will only remain united - it should only remain united - if its citizens want to live together in one civil society."

"I don't really know what a cyclotron is but I am certainly very happy Canada has one!"

"I never actually got around to taping conversations with my guests, but there are a lot of things you can learn from a man like Nixon."

"I don't know if the member of Prince Edward-Hastings thinks he's on camera, but he's not."

"I saw the charter as an expression of my long-held view that the subject of law must be the individual human being; the law must permit the individual to fulfil himself or herself to the utmost."

"I am sometimes also asked whether the October Crisis taught me anything about the art of governing, or about the means that were at my disposal for defusing the crisis. First of all, it taught me that you can be the prescient futurologist in the world, you can lay out the best-made plans and define your priorities with the utmost care, but if you show yourself to be incapable of managing a crisis when it arises, you will lose your right to govern and the whole thing will blow up in your face."

"I think we have to realize that Canada is not immortal. But if it is going to go, let it go with a bang rather than a whimper."

"I remember thinking that walking on the beach as a free man is pretty desirable."

"I went home, discussed it with the boys, put them to bed. I walked until midnight in the storm, then I went home and took a sauna for an hour and a half. It was all clear. I listened to my heart and saw if there were any signs of my destiny in the sky, and there were none - there were just snowflakes."

"I walked until midnight in the storm, then I went home and took a sauna for an hour and a half. It was all clear. I listened to my heart and saw if there were any signs of my destiny in the sky, and there were none ? there were just snowflakes."

"I was too busy doing my job and living my life to spend time keeping notes for some future volume of memoirs."

"If I found in my own ranks that a certain number of guys wanted to cut my throat, I'd make sure that I cut their throats first."

"I would have to point out in the strongest terms the autocracy of the Liberal structure and the cowardice of its members. I have never seen in all my examination of politics so degrading a spectacle as that of all these Liberals turning their coats in unison with their Chief, when they saw the chance to take power."

"It is wonderful to be despised, if, deep down, we know we are right."

"I, for one, will be convinced that the Canada we know and love will be gone forever. But, then, Thucydides wrote that Themistocles' greatness lay in the fact that he realized Athens was not immortal. I think we have to realize that Canada is not immortal; but, if it is going to go, let it go with a bang rather than a whimper."

"I will use all my strength to bring about a just society to a nation living in a tough world."

"It's not the end of the world, but you can see it from there."

"If you want to see me again, don't bring signs saying "Trudeau is a pig" and don't bring signs that he hustles women, because I won't talk to you. I didn't get into politics to be insulted. And don't throw wheat at me either. If you don't stop that, I'll kick you right in the ass."

"I've been called worse things by better people."

"Liberalism is the philosophy for our time, because it does not try to conserve every tradition of the past, because it does not apply to new problems the old doctrinaire solutions, because it is prepared to experiment and innovate and because it knows that the past is less important than the future."

"Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt."